Books by Gary Graybill

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Maxine Waters: An Unrepresentative Representative

Maxine Waters is a member of the House of Representatives in the United States Congress. She is a Democrat from California and a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. She is also on my own personal list of the top ten worst Representatives in Congress. Let me tell you a little about Mrs. Waters and see if you see the wisdom in my putting her on that list.

According to Chuck Neubauer and Ted Rohrlich writing in the LA Times in 2004, Maxine Waters' relatives had made more than $1 million during the preceding eight years by doing business with companies, candidates and causes that Waters had helped. They claimed she and her husband helped a company get government bond business, and her daughter Karen Waters and son Edward Waters have profited from her connections. Waters replied that "They do their business and I do mine."

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) named Waters to its list of corrupt members of Congress in its 2005, 2006 and 2009 reports. Citizens Against Government Waste named her the June 2009 Porker of the Month due to her intention to obtain an earmark for the Maxine Waters Employment Preparation Center.

Waters' husband is a stockholder and former director of OneUnited Bank and the bank's executives were major contributors to her campaigns. In September 2008, Waters arranged meetings between U.S. Treasury Department officials and OneUnited Bank, so that the bank could plead for federal cash. It had been heavily invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and its capital was "all but wiped out" after the U.S. government took them over. The bank received $12 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money. The matter is currently being investigated by the House Ethics Committee.

Maxine is also a skilled politician (a good reason for me to dislike her all by itself). In an example of that skill, on August 20, 2011 while at a town hall discussing some of the displeasure that supporters of President Obama have had with the Congressional Black Caucus not supporting the president, Waters stated, "This is a tough game. You can’t be intimidated. You can’t be frightened. And as far as I’m concerned, the ‘tea party’ can go straight to Hell." She rather successfully deflected the criticism and blamed the Tea Party for the Black Caucus not supporting the President –a notion that otherwise would have been blatantly ridiculous.

Waters resides in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles, which is approximately six miles west of downtown and is definitely not known as a black neighborhood nor a poor neighborhood, let alone a neighborhood of the poor black people she claims to represent. Her husband, Sid Williams, played professional football in the NFL and is a former U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas (another reason for me to dislike her, I want that job).

I think, however, the biggest single reason for my dislike of (un)Representative Waters is what she pulled on September 9, 2000. On that day she attended a reception at the Riverside Church in Harlem for the Stalinist Dictator and all-around bad guy, Fidel Castro. This man, who Maxine greeted by gleefully cheering “Viva Fidel!” had intended to turn the area where the reception was being held into a nuclear wasteland. “If the nuclear missiles had remained,” boasted Che Guevara to the London Daily Worker in November 1962, “we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is worth millions of atomic victims."

Two years before this, Maxine had voted to pass a resolution calling on Cuba to extradite fugitives who had been given asylum by Castro. She wrote on September 29, 1998 the following letter:

“Dear President Castro, I am writing to clarify my position on a resolution recently passed by the United States House of Representatives on September 14, 1998. I, and some of the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, mistakenly voted for House Concurrent Resolution 254 which called on the Government of Cuba to extradite to the United States Joanne Chesimard and all other individuals who have fled the United States from political persecution and received political asylum in Cuba. Joanne Chesimard was the birth name of a political activist known to most Members of the Congressional Black Caucus as Assata Shakur. For the record, I am opposed to the resolution. I unequivocally stated that a mistake was made and I would have voted against the legislation."

Let me tell you about Joanne Chesimard. According to the New Jersey Police Department,

“On May 2, 1973 New Jersey State Troopers James Harper and Werner Foerster were patrolling the New Jersey Turnpike in the area of East Brunswick and stopped a car with three occupants. The Troopers were questioning the occupants when the driver and female passenger suddenly came up with semi-automatic pistols and opened fire. Trooper Foerster was struck twice in the chest, and Trooper Harper was hit in the shoulder. The female (Joane Chesimard) then proceeded to take the service weapon from the injured Trooper Foerster’s. She pointed it at the wounded Trooper and shot him twice in the head, execution style. The thirty-four-year-old trooper with just three years on the road died soon after. He left a wife and family behind.”

As I said earlier, Maxine is a skilled politician. She is able to bend circumstances to fit her personal agenda –an agenda that has nothing to do with looking out for the interests of her constituents, nor of the nation. She is a salient example of everything bad that the word “politician” has come to mean.